1. Technical Field
The present invention is a ramp device for assisting pets and other animals to escape from a swimming pool, or another body of water with vertical or near vertical walls, without human assistance.
2. Background Information
Swimming pool owners and workers often find, to their regret, that a pet or a wild animal has fallen into an unattended outdoor or indoor swimming pool, either by design or by accident, but was not able to exit the pool and therefore eventually drowned. Family or stray pets, such as dogs and cats, and wild animals, including rats, opossums, squirrels, and raccoons, and a wide variety of large and small insects, are too often found drowned in the family, club or municipal pool, because the animals were unable to find or climb the pool steps or ladder, or to climb the smooth, vertical sides of the swimming pool. In addition to the physical and/or emotional pain suffered by the pet, its owner, and any bystanders, there is the unpleasant task of removing the remains of the domestic or wild animal from the pool. Since the animal""s body may have contaminated the pool, the pool must be decontaminated, which often means incurring the expense of costly chemicals and/or draining and refilling the pool. A device is needed that can help animals trapped in a pool to escape, when no human is present to extricate them.
The present invention offers a solution to this problem without the expense of reconstructing or redesigning the pool, and without damage to the swimming pool. The ramp device of the present invention is inexpensive and easy to install, use, and remove.
The present invention is a buoyant ramp device for removable attachment to the deck or wall of a swimming pool or the like. The ramp device includes a generally tombstone-shaped central member having one convexly curved side, and two generally split (half)-tombstone-shaped wing members attached on each of two opposite sides to the central member. The central member is attached by means of flexible straps to the edge of a swimming pool deck, such that the side of the central member opposite the curved side is next to the pool wall, when the ramp device is deployed in the pool water.
A ramp device for assisting animals in escaping a swimming pool, or another body of water with a vertical or near vertical side wall, includes:
(a) a buoyant central member;
(b) two generally mirror image, buoyant wing members movably attached to opposite sides of the central member, the wing members being smaller in size than the central member;
(c) a means of movable attachment of the central member to a deck of the pool or the side wall; and
(d) a mechanism for maintaining the wing members at a selected angle in relation to the plane of the central member;
wherein, when the ramp device is in an open, deployed position, the central member floats in the water at a generally horizontal angle in relation to the downward angled wing members.